Posts Tagged ‘chrysler’

It appears that Toyota’s renotification to owners of recalled vehicles from last year is just the tip of the iceberg for what could potentially be a much larger industry-wide recall. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration is opening a preliminary evaluation investigation into roughly 1.1 million vehicles from Chrysler, Honda, Mazda, Nissan, Toyota and parts supplier Takata regarding faulty airbag inflators in several models.

NHTSA has received six reports – three directly, two from Takata and one from Toyota – of vehicles with ruptured airbag inflators from 2002-2006, which resulted in three injuries. So far, all six incidents have occurred in high humidity areas like Florida and Puerto Rico. According to Toyota’s latest recall announcement, the inflators may have an improper propellant that could cause it to rupture in a crash and the bag to deploy abnormally.

At this time, NHTSA’s investigation is still in the early stages. It’s still determining from the automakers and supplier how widespread the problem is and what models are involved. Scroll down to read the entire preliminary evaluation report.

Fiat CEO Sergio Marchionne, whose refrain is “We’re willing to engage in discussions with anyone else” when it comes to making deals to achive a larger economy of scale, has opened another front according to a report in Reuters. When the deal was announced for Alfa Romeo to codevelop a roadster with Mazda to be based on the next-generation MX-5 Miata platform, further cooperation in Europe was mentioned as an aside. It could go beyond that, though, with Reuters reporting that that Fiat is open to building Mazdas in Fiat and Chrysler plants worldwide.

Such an agreement would allow Fiat to address unutilized factory capacity and the platform-sharing necessary to the arrangement would lower development costs – a hot-button priority for both Fiat and Mazda. Of course, this is only a statement of willingness on Marchionne’s part, but with the same statement being made so often and Mazda being in a bit of a cost pickle, it’s probably only a matter of time before something more serious comes of it.